Perspectives of New Music Perspectives of New Music

Language for One, Language for All: Adorno and Modernism
Author(s): Rainer Rochlitz and Roberta Brown

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp. 18-36
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
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LANGUAGE FORONE,
LANGUAGE FORAT L:
ADORNO AND MODERNISM
RAINERROCHLITZ
M ODERNITY CAN BE assigned a minimalist as well as a maximalist defi-

nition. In the first case, one would go back to the birth of modern
subjectivity, to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution,
and modernity would be understood as the perpetual re-questioning of the
normative criteria on which a posttraditional society is founded, as a
chronic tension between the demands of profitability, of efficaciousness, of
maintenance, and the demands of validity, of the autonomous logics in the
sciences, of norms, and of arts.1 From this perspective, the historical catas-
trophes of the nineteenth century do not justify the verdict which
denounces modern reason as such. In the second case, modernity can be
This article was originally published in French as "Langage pour un, langage pour
tous," Critique, nos. 488 and 489 (January/February 1988):95-113.
Language for One, Language for All 19
seen as the absolute radicality of the political and artistic avant-gardes and
of their continuous bid for change, especially since the middle of the nine-
teenth century, a radicality which opposes to the apocalyptic negativity of
modern societies a demand for rational reconciliation without compromise.
In this latter case, after the successive defeats of the radical movements,
there appears a deceived and bitter, cynical or desperate "postmodernity,"
and a sceptical realism which ends up denouncing as utopian the perspec-
tives of minimalist modernity.2
Adorno's thought is situated midway between these two definitions,
and leans strongly toward the second. What separates Adorno from post-
modernity is his paradoxical effort to save normativity and the emancipat-
ing potential of reason, whose totalitarian drift he nevertheless denounces.
As for his successors, the principle of all essential change is resolutely con-
fined to a force which is exterior to reason, and notably to the imagination
without which it would be sterile and repressive.
Historically, Adorno's thought stems from a triple failure: the failure of
Western humanism at Auschwitz, a catastrophe which the culture of Bach
and Beethoven, of Goethe and Holderlin, of Kant and Hegel, did not
know how to prevent; the failure, in Stalinism, of the political movement
which had claimed "to realize philosophy";3 the failure, finally, of Western
culture in a cultural industry dominated by the American model. In all
three cases, Adorno (and Horkheimer, with whom he wrote La Dialectique
de la raison, completed in 1944) sees the triumph of instrumental or practi-
cal reason in the modern subject, a subject which ends up by abolishing
itself as subject.
However-and it is this which links Adorno to the first definition of
modernity-philosophy "keeps itself alive" by virtue of its practical failures.
It strives to save that which instrumental reason can only miss or destroy:
the nonidentical, the individual, and the particular.4 What permits think-
ing, in opposition to the spontaneous tendency of thought-"to think
means to identify"5-is the very failure of an identification which misses its
object; by a sort of return of the repressed, that which is nonidentical forces
thought into a "dialectic," that is to say, into a critical reflection on itself,
and into a mimetic relation with its object, much like the processes which
are expressed in art. Instead of identifying its object, dialectical thought
identifies itself with it, while at the same time retaining its identity as critical
thought.
As Habermas has shown, this conclusion is inevitable within the frame-
work of a philosophy of the subject, such as Adorno's philosophy remains.
It can apprehend only by objectification-and thus by "reification"-that
which arises from an essentially intersubjective "identity" of persons and of
relations of reciprocity on which, in a final analysis, the social fabric relies.
20 Perspectives of New Music
That is why it attempts to offer a remedy by a mimetic approach and a con-

ceptuality founded on "affinity." The recent theory which grounds society,
language, and personal identity on the activity of communication, anterior
to any reifying objectification, can avoid this stumbling block and more
accurately assign a place to the pathologies of modernity. It escapes the
aporias of maximalism and its postmodern consequences, because it is not
compelled to attribute to the catastrophes of the twentieth century a mean-
ing tied to the totalitarian essence of the modern subject.
Among the theories of modern art, the aspiration of the Adornian project
is unique; it is comparable only to the three or four great syntheses of
German philosophy, to the aesthetics of Kant and Schelling, of Hegel and
the young Lukacs, and to the collection of essays by Walter Benjamin which
served as a model for the musical and literary studies of Adorno himself. Of
all these theories, that of Adorno is the only one which was able to take into
account, not only romanticism and postromanticism, but also the avant-
gardes, their decline, and their influence up to the threshold of
postmodernism.
In spite of the pessimistic tone which he consciously adopts, Adorno still
speaks of an artistic modernity of the future. For him in 1969, not only is
this adventure, menaced by cultural industry, yet to be concluded, but he
places in it his hope for the survival of the critical spirit, since, according to
him, dialectical thought itself relies on a conceptual equivalent of the mime-
tic attitude. Right up to its negation by a radically demystified art, aesthetic
appearance is for him the basis of hope. It is this and this alone which main-
tains the perspective of a reconciled world, a view which philosophic
thought is incapable of preserving without the aid of art.6 Demystified and
reconciled myth, rational mimesis, art, and especially the disenchanted art
of the avant-garde constitute the normative base of Adornian philosophy;
this is the base which authorizes its critique of society.
The ultimate and incomplete synthesis of all Adorno's essays, his
Aesthetic Theory, attempts to reconstruct all of artistic modernity as a func-
tion of the same historical situation. All modern works should be under-
stood as responses to one and the same problem, that of myth, of
disenchantment which is the process of an Enlightenment ongoing for
thousands of years, and finally of reconciliation. It is a reflection on art seen
from the interior, from the point of view of creation and of the work, with
all the complexity and all the reflexive character that this implies for a mod-
ern artist. This is why the Aesthetic Theory-with its concentric structure
and its aphoristic writing-draws close to being a work of art in itself, play-
ing with the concepts to render them more permeable to their objects, and
denying itself the transparency of a linear reading. No aesthetic connects art
and modernity as closely; art is only realized by liberating itself from all het-
eronomy; it is the art of the avant-garde which reveals the essence of all art,
but also its aporias.
Adorno's thought is paradoxical. Dedicated entirely to modernity, at the
same time it gnaws away at its very foundations. In spite of the disastrous
balance sheet which he draws up, Adorno nevertheless refuses to abandon
the project of modernity. It is this which constitutes his intermediate posi-
tion between the two definitions of modernity. There is no other root of
reason for him; if the dialectical concept tends to be mimetic, the mimesis
of modern art is rational and-contrary to Nietzsche and Heidegger-does
not thrust its roots into a past which is anterior to Reason. It is this which
saves Adorno from irrationalism, without however permitting him to dif-
ferentiate art and philosophy as much as he would like to do.
One can say-in reflecting on Albrecht Wellmer's analysis7-that the par-
adox of Adornian thought is due to his fusion of two types of criticism, that
of a rational philosophy of history and that of a critique of reason in the
name of its other. The appeal to reason's other becomes inevitable once
Adorno and Horkheimer begin to interpret the rationality of the historical
process according to the Hegelian and Marxist dialectic of progress as well
as to the Weberian analysis of bureaucratic rationality.8 Instrumental rea-
son, which governs the development of the Mind (or of the productive
forces), thus escapes all rational control, to the extent that all reason is
instrumental, is the objectification of a reality by a subject. From this per-
spective, the critique of reason can only be carried forth in the name of rea-
son's other, in the name of the nonidentical (nature, urges, poetry, the
oppressed). Adorno's originality with regard to Nietsche lies in the fact that
for him the nonidentical is not irrational, but rather a deformed element of
integral reason. The dynamic which connects the two sides of reason, the
"dialectic of reason," is fundamentally a dialectic of mimesis: domination
mimes the violence of natural forces in order to master them by work and
by conceptual thought-it is a mimesis of death in the name of the conser-
vation of self-whereas aesthetic affinity mimes that which is dominated.
As with Heidegger, the development of the modern subject coincides
with the progress of reification, of the objectifying and dominating relation
to nature, both external and internal; but analogously, the development of
the subject is accompanied for Adorno by an internal differentiation whose
effects are beneficial. Dominating reason gives rise to the birth of mimetic
reason in the arts and in dialectical thought. To the extent that it is con-
trasted with magic, art is a rationalized mimesis, an appearance conscious of
its unreality. Alone, it cannot reconcile a reality which has been oppressed
and destroyed by instrumental reason; it can only testify to a possible rec-
onciliation, evoked by aesthetic appearance, while representing nonrecon-
ciled reality.9 Modern works-those of Schonberg, of Kafka, or of Beckett-
thus call forth reconciliation and at the same time deny it by their use of dis-
sonance; to present dissonance as resolved in creating a harmonious work of
art would deprive art of its critical force.
According to Adorno, humanity will escape its self-destruction by
instrumental reason only to the extent that the two sides of mimesis reach a
reconciliation. Now, the imbalance of modernity results from the fact that
avant-garde art is already a synthesis of mimesis and of rationality-of the
most advanced techniques and principles of organization-whereas positiv-
ist philosophy, sciences, technology, economic administration, and man-
agement have eliminated every mimetic element. As a successful synthesis
of the human endeavor, art thus once again becomes the model for
philosophy. 10
If modern art is obscure and refuses itself to immediate comprehension,
this is because its apparent irrationality is the inverse of instrumental rea-
son. In exploring the repressed domain of the nonidentical which it is in
the business of saving, this art incarnates a form of reason which would no
longer be instrumental. It is thus that in speaking of artistic modernity
Adorno does not cease to consider current problems in philosophy.
The dialectic of mimesis appears especially in connection with concepts
of innovation and experimentation; it culminates in that which Adorno
calls the "subjective point," a sort of point of no return for artistic
radicality.
Designed on the model of a commodity which must affirm its competi-
tive uniqueness, the novelty of the modern work is at the same time a mor-
tal parody of itself, to the point of the self-destruction of art. Contrary to
appearances, a new work shows reality as it is, increasingly damaged under
its polished surface, disfigured by the universal reign of merchandise, a final
avatar of classical domination. The novelty of avant-garde art is its incessant
transcendence of negativity. At the same time, the work nonetheless
remains an artistic appearance, and in this manner a promise of happiness,
thanks to a form, in itself new, which projects a distanced light on the real-
ity which it reveals. This entanglement of disillusion and of utopian prom-
ise constitutes the dialectic of artistic modernity according to Adorno; it
associates the content of truth with a quasi-messianic function of
appearance in general.
If the new is "irresistible,""l that is because each work which is truly
new forces itself as a conquest upon other artists, analogous to a scientific
discovery, henceforth not to be dismissed. It is this which connects the
development of art both to the history of truth and to the development of
productive forces, including the knowledge of artistic techniques. A work

of art is intimately linked to a commodity in a capitalist society and can
only affirm its autonomy by pulling itself away from the circulation of
exchange by dint of its uselessness, in the manner of a "ready-made" by
Duchamp.12 The truth of an avant-garde work consists in revealing all the
violence, all the inhumanity, all the reification which crystallizes in a com-
modity produced by modern society.13 It remains to be known if art can be
associated this closely to truth and to a philosophy of history univocally
reduced to a course toward the catastrophe, whose Benjaminian image
seems to have profoundly impressed Adorno.14
Dominating reason being irrational-the destruction of nature and of
humankind-apparent irrationality in modern art is according to Adorno a
form of rational reaction which denounces false instrumental logic. More
precisely-and in this Adorno undoubtedly intends to take into account the
Kantian systematic-art opposes to instrumental rationality the very finality
of reason. In its continual reaction to the development of productive forces,
art follows their logic by anticipating the diversion of technical potentials to
human ends.15 It is to this intimate relation with the movement of history
that aesthetic novelty owes its "irresistible" character.
By establishing such a close relation between art and historic reality,
Adorno denies himself the concept of a logic proper to the artistic creation
itself, founded on the emancipation and the differentiation of subjectivity,
in the sense of a minimalist theory of modernity. This, moreover, is why he
relativizes the autonomy of art from the very start of his Aesthetic Theory.16
The seductive force of the Adornian aesthetic is tied to the fact that a great
number of modern artists were themselves involved with a logic of tran-
scendence, devolving from the motion of the historic process toward the
worst, even if they did not adhere to the dialectic of reason and of its mime-
tic inverse. The debate on the "end of the avant-gardes," ongoing since the
1970s, has revealed a break with this logic of transcendence. In this con-
text, the renunciation of the maximalist model could open out into two
opposing perspectives: a pure and simple inversion of radical logic, or the
elaboration of another logic, compatible with the minimalist model. Dis-
cussions on postmodernism fall within the first hypothesis; rather than a
pursuit of radicalization, there is a provocative acceptance of all that which
former reasoning had banished from modernism: a taste for the eccentric,
for kitsch, for luxuriant excess rather than ascetic rigor; rather than a critical
conscience going against the stream, a complacent adherence to what is in
vogue. This inversion remains attached in a negative sense to avant-gardist
dogmatism: "one must be absolutely postmodern." In the second hypoth-
esis, it is a question of reconstructing a logic of artistic modernity which is
not simply the obverse of economic and social history, but which reacts in
its own way, according to its own proper logic. The first path follows, in
spite of itself, the logic of maximalism through a new global turning point
and a new sectarianism which this time is eclectic; the second separates out
the elements of a subjective singularization of language, even as in the apoc-
alyptic logic of the avant-gardes.
If the dialectic of modernism tries to establish a relation between art and
historic truth, the analysis of experimentation is concerned with the status
of the subject in modernity; it defines the procedure which a subject
impaired by identifying reason must follow-to bring about that which is
modern. Originally, the concept of experimentation "simply meant that a
self-conscious will set out to explore unknown and illicit ways of doing
things;"17 at a later time-a time that was current for Adorno-this concept
designated "the fact that the artistic subject uses methods the results of
which it cannot foresee."18 By abandoning itself to heteronomy-in alea-
tory music, in action painting, and in automatic writing-the subject
exposes itself to regression while trying to remain master of itself at the
point of contact with that which is the most alien to it.19 Artistic modern-
ity is thus a test for the sovereignty of the aesthetic subject before the insig-
nificant and the nonaesthetic; but for Adorno, the irrational element which
thus imposes itself upon the subject has the characteristics of truth
repressed by reason.
The theory of the "subjective point" relates to the same problematic of
the subject: "If modern art as a whole can be understood as a continual
intervention of the subject, which is no longer at all disposed to let the tra-
ditional game of forms of works of art play in a nonreflective way, then to
the continual interventions of the self, there corresponds a tendency to give
up in powerlessness."20 For when everything is a construction of the sub-
ject, "there remains only abstract unity, freed from the antithetical
moment by which alone it became united."21 Art is at the same stroke
"rejected at the point of pure subjectivity,"22 by the cry of expressionism,
by cubist construction, by the gesture of Dada, by the intervention of
Duchamp. After having reached this extreme point, the artist-as Picasso
and Schonberg themselves illustrate-can only come back to a more tradi-
tional order. In this, Adorno sees signs of the end of an art which
renounces itself rather than compromise; truth content risks destroying aes-
thetic appearance. Beckett alone succeeds at this tour deforce: "The space
assigned to works of art, between discursive barbarism and poetic pret-
tification, is hardly more vast than the point of indifference in which Beck-
ett has set up shop."23
This restrictive concept of subjectivity as an integrative force-which,
once having lost the aid of tradition, could only choose between sterile
domination and abandonment of self-is due to the limits of the philosophy
of the subject, the domain within which Adorno's thought remains.24
According to this philosophy, the subject is essentially an objectifying
activity, even when it examines itself; it would thus not be able to con-
stitute any meaning, since meaning is always intersubjective. According to
Adorno, the growing weight of the absurd in modern art is due to the
increasing force of a subject which dismantles all valid meaning. One might
thus believe that Adorno expresses a regret vis-a-vis the objectivity of mean-
ing in traditional societies, but this is not at all so. In truth, the stakes of art
are for him foreign to the signification; art is a kind of "nonsignifying lan-
guage,"25 as he characterizes both natural beauty and a modern art
which-as does music-moves away from all narration. The progressive
intellectualization of art contributes to this just as does its primitivism, the
taste for fauvism. But in spite of this refusal of signification, Adorno
attributes a very precise message to the language of art: it is the "language
of suffering"; it evokes the negativity of reality and exorcises it through
form. All "authentic" works convey this same message, which converges
with the ultimate goal of philosophy.
II
Recent attempts to liberate aesthetics from this metaphysical heritage

which-for Adorno, but also for Heidegger-makes of art the preserver of a
precise truth, generally have the flaw of remaining negatively dependent on
these concepts. Thinking to return to Kant or to Nietzsche, they substitute
something for truth, be it the play of subjective faculties, authenticity, or a
relativization of the concept of truth.
Albrecht Wellmer and Martin Seel,26 who endeavor to reinterpret
Adorno in light of the thought of Habermas, are drawn to aesthetics as a
means of completing a theory of the forms of rationality. Their analysis con-
centrates on the contribution of art and of aesthetic reception to the collec-
tive process of communication. Thus, Wellmer opens aesthetics to art, an
aesthetics which is posterior to the Aesthetic Theory, by attributing to mod-
ern subjectivity the same power of regeneration and integration that
Adorno had reserved for the open forms of art. This allows him to reformu-
late the Adornian aesthetic utopia as a salvation for the socially excluded
and repressed, not only in an aesthetic testimony of truth, but in a commu-
nication constantly enlarged through the action of art.
As for Martin Seel, he renounces such a utopia to conceive a social game
of rationalities in which art serves as invitation to make experiences-experi-
ments-for their own sake. The work of art presents a "way of seeing"
which cannot be objectivized (p. 272) but which, if it succeeds, can be
actualized and made the object of a discourse showing others the mode of
perception which leads to such a comprehension.
In the history of aesthetics, Martin Seel distinguishes two great,
erroneous tendencies: the "privative," which considers a work of art as

inexpressible, radically foreign to a discursive apprehension of the real (Seel
cites Nietzsche, Valery, Bataille, Bubner); and the "superlative," which sees
in the aesthetic phenomenon the manifestation of a truth superior to that
which discursive reason can attain; the first tendency is purist, the second
fundamentalist (pp. 46-47). Now, Seel's endeavor consists in defining a
more rational relation with art, that of attention to a content of experience
presented in the form of a nonpropositional articulation. The criterion for
the aesthetic value is not truth but rather aesthetic "success" (pp. 126ff.).
Those works or artistic manifestations are successful which express the con-
tents of lived attitudes to which they alone give us access; of which they
reveal to us a new sense; and which appear to us as adequate and essential
for a "just" life in the present time (pp. 210-11). Aesthetic rationality
appears initially in an argumentative form highlighting that which shows
itself to be expression in the artistic phenomenon (p. 214). Such an
emphasis is both interpretation (commentary) and actualization (confron-
tation, immediate emotion), and becomes criticism by combining these
two aspects. Criticism specifies the mode of perception which reveals the
signification of the aesthetic phenomenon (p. 296); the artists themselves
do not communicate any signification but make something which is signifi-
cant in itself (p. 291).
For Seel, art does not aim for anything other than to acquaint us with the
experiences that are possible on the horizon of the historic present-and
first to draw our distancing attention to the experience which is ours; it
does not convey any other utopia (p. 330). That of a widening message,
integrating what up until then was inexpressible, is not specifically aes-
thetic, but rather political. Those who make the experience aesthetic live
the fragile presence of liberty, not its ever-vanishing future (p. 332). Seel
thus rejects all aesthetics of "preappearance" or of the anticipation of a real
utopia, where he sees nothing but illusion.
His book is an important attempt to articulate a domain which is diffi-
cult to grasp, that of an expression which is neither idiosyncratic nor con-
ceptual. He represents the most recent example of a paradoxical effort
characteristic of German thought since Kant: to make sense of art through
philosophy, while at the same time making art a privileged object of reflec-
tion, and keeping guard against its philosophic overevaluation. Reason has
need of an art which clarifies, but art is not the totality of reason (p. 326).
Wellmer and Seel react against the privilege Adorno assigns to the cre-
ative process and to the work of art. As does H.R. Jauss (and Paul Ricoeur,
who develops in Time and Narrative a theory of mimesis as refiguration of
reality through the configuration of the artwork itself), they endeavor to
reintroduce the receptive subject that the Aesthetic Theory had dismissed.
This option actually recommends itself when one perceives the limits of the
philosophy of the subject, which lead Adorno to admit of no social impact

on the part of modern works, and to conceive only the evocation of a uto-
pian reconciliation with nature, one which balks at all practical realization.
It remains that aesthetics-unlike ethics-is concerned with historically
dated and completed objects which have the particularity of being able to
influence well beyond the time of their creation.27 If aesthetic judgment
renders "present" an experience crystallized in the work, one must admit
that the work itself is not devoid of that rationality that criticism realizes; "a
moment of reason is affirmed in the autonomy of the radically differenti-
ated domain of avant-garde art."28 Before analyzing the activity which con-
sists in appropriating and making available the experience contained in the
work, it is thus necessary to examine the rationality inherent in the aes-
thetic object, without which there is neither aesthetic nor critical experi-
ence. Without it, the work of art remains reason's irrational other and gains
access to rationality only in critical discourse.
Traditional art-narrative, coherent, significant by itself-often seems to
be rational in that it is composed of elements arising from a cognitive or
moral rationality; on the other hand, modern art distinguishes itself pre-
cisely-and Adorno stresses this-by its apparent irrationality. It is this
which led Nietzsche to see in the work of Wagner a resurgence of "pre-
socratic" Dionysianism, radically foreign to the modern logos. The problem
thus consists in identifying, precisely in this modern art which is reduced to
that which is unique to it, the element which constitutes aesthetic valid-
ity-that in the name of which a work is considered a success-and which
allows it to be judged. This brings us back to associating the rationality of
the work of art with its validity as a work.
Aesthetics always comes up against the difficulty of reconciling the vir-
tually universal validity of the successful work, the equivocal or polysemous
character of this universality, and the singular character of the experience to
which it gives form (often even of the material in which it is realized). Kant
thus speaks of a universality without the intervention of a concept, Adorno
of a nonsignificant eloquence. In both cases, one of the terms has a particu-
lar connotation: for Kant, the nonconceptual aspect expresses both a defi-
ciency which turns art into the "symbol of morality," and a path which
leads to a moral life; for Adorno, eloquence is paradoxically univocal: it tells
of the suffering that knowledge cannot express, and thus the difference
between works becomes secondary in relation to the "nonrepresentable"
which is the content of truth.
Art-especially modern art-is thus a language, but a language charged
with intense energy and which denies communication.29 Aesthetic elo-
quence establishes itself in two ways: by a break with the established sig-
nifications of ordinary language and by the creation of a singularized and
intensified language, a language "for one." The elaboration of this language
"for one" transforms it into a language "for all," made virtually universal
by dint of its intelligibility, which necessitates a deciphering.30 Aesthetic
comprehension-and criticism-is thus an art of translation which causes
the apparent singularity of the work (and of the experience which con-
stitutes it) to attain a virtually universal signification, but which is for its
own part a function of a particular actualization. The unity of aesthetic
"validity" does not in any way reduce the diversity of the "nonsignificant
eloquence" particular to each work, nor the plurality of interpretations of
which each can become the object, precisely to the extent that it is
successful.
For Adorno, the particular nature of modern art was a function of real-
ity-of absolute suffering under the reign of totalitarian identity-about
which artworks unfurled their eloquence. According to the concept which
has just been sketched, modern art is essentially a function of an internal
necessity of decentralized subjectivity; a language "for one" charged with
individual energy, which becomes "language for all" when the work is suc-
cessful, is a proposal of meaning3l in the form of contingent figures and
ordered materials.
The intensified proposals of meaning do not form a continuous tradition,

according to the concept ofhermeneutics; nor do they reveal a hidden essence
along the line of the truth of being, but rather, a fragile construction whose
internal coherence is always a little strained. That which saves the meaning-
that rare commodity ofpostmetaphysical modernity-from contingency and
total arbitrariness, is the fact that its elaboration is subterraneanly a collective
work, constantly nourished by the social exchange of experiences, which is
the foundation of artistic configurations; no singularity deprived of all supra-
individual signification can crystallize into a work.
Proposals of meaning reflect an interpretation and an arrangement of sen-
sitive perception for which the accuracy of tone and the original character of
the experience (and of the language found to express it) count more than the
conformity to facts and to norms. Art is not in the order of the everyday,
even though it seeks its epiphanies in the most ordinary life; it can take the
liberty-and this is in fact what one expects from it-of ignoring the intersub-
jective demands which constitute daily life in society. Only in this way does
the stylization of the proposal of meaning become possible. For the receiving
subjects, impressed by this ordering of meaning acquired at the price of a cer-
tain number of abstractions, the proposal will be confronted with suitable
experiences, but also with quotidian demands, and its pertinence will be
tested against the true and the just.
From here onwards, one can attempt to explain-without premature ref-
erence to historical reality-certain characteristics of modern art, notably
the status of negativity and its avatars. According to our hypothesis, the
proposal for a coherence of meaning based upon an absolutely singular
experience brings into play the demand for a radical expression of self
which-from Baudelaire to Beckett-comes up against rigid and intolerant
social structures. It is this which gives to aesthetic singularity the
appearance of the destructive, satanic, revolted negative. It breaks with the
everyday and the constraints of rational subjectivity to bring to life an
instant of absolute presence. The sudden shock of ecstasy or of sacred hor-
ror snatches it away from all habit and from all familiarity and plunges it
into a lucid rapture. Extreme singularity wounds hopes for inviolable per-
sonal integrity, whose pathological deformations it denounces while at the
same time becoming attached to them in as much as they are images of sin-
gularity. So long as the singularity of the subject is not established, it
appears demoniac, and art is inhabited by a spirit of revolt; once it is recog-
nized-and it is this which seems today to be the case-art loses its role of
representing the "accursed part." Initially subversive, artists tend to
become public characters, proposing each of their singularities as a model
across the schemas of their experience. Contrary to that which maximalist
modernity dreads, it is not the absolute singularity whose existence is men-
aced, that will be mutilated, leveled, or abolished by social normalization.
What risks generalization is a singularity that is without universal bearing, a
pluralism of "differences," empty and flatulent.32 At the extreme, current
culture tends to multiply voiceless narcissisms one upon another, and to
confuse the fugitive attention that they arouse with aesthetic or intellectual
expression. Hence also, during a certain time, the cult of madness, of per-
versions and of abnormalities of all sorts, which themselves have no aes-
thetic value, but only documentary interest. The demand for aesthetic
validity which characterizes an intensified proposal of meaning calls for a
symmetry between the "voice" emanating from the work and that of the
receiving subject; so long as it is a "proposal of meaning," the work is not a
psychoanalytical "case" which one studies, and this symmetry is the basis
of aesthetic rationality.
In accordance with its subversive side, aesthetic singularity thus ques-
tions the forms of social normativity which uselessly limit the expression of
self. Inversely, coherence of meaning, placed under the demand for origi-
nality, is ceaselessly confronted with the resistance of the nonmeaningful
and the untenable. From Manet and Baudelaire to Beckett and Bacon, the
sovereignty of art affirms itself in the face of the negative and the insignifi-
cant. The work is a "proposal" of meaning at the risk of failure: of a mean-
ing which can remain private or of limited interest. In the course of this
process, the means employed to affirm the sovereignty of the artist are con-
tinually reduced to the "essential": to the expression of an invincible sin-
gularity, inexpressible in existing artistic languages. Basic geometric shapes,
primitive strokes, pure or elementary colors, bidimensionality, distanced
daily objects, raw materials, displayed in the context of a show, can play this
role, and arouse the shock of the inartistic annexed by the sovereignty of
the artistic sphere.
"Proposal of meaning" signifies finally that the language "for one"-the
singularity of the work which seeks to be recognized as singular univer-
sal33-must be presented to an audience, in order to put to the test its vir-
tually universal intelligibility, its effect of aesthetic coherence as a
singularized language, and its power to make the singularity of its experi-
ence resonate in the historical experience of the receiving subjects. It is thus
necessary that the work overcome at least the three stumbling blocks of
absolute singularity: being nonintelligible or stripped of interest; the obsta-
cle of aesthetic incoherence, or that of a break in tone incompletely mas-
tered; and of inadequacy to historical expectations of originality, or of the
nontopicality of the dissonance to which it responds.
Contrary to dramaturgical activity in daily life, which aims at influencing
others to attain a precise goal, the presentation of works before an anony-
mous audience-a sort of generalized Other-establishes a contract between
the work and its viewers.34 Nothing, in fact, obliges them to subject them-
selves to the discipline of the work, but once they have freely abandoned
themselves to it, they will experience-or not-the internal necessity, and
will recognize it by their aesthetic emotion and their critical judgment. It is
this logic which makes of art (and of the aesthetic experience) a sphere of a
demand for validity analogous to those which define science and ethics, but
of a weaker demand, incapable of assuring the cohesion of society; it is a
demand without an immediate "illocutory force," without necessary con-
sequence for daily life. That which could have welded together the audience
of certain works in the past-recited epics, tragedies presented before the
entire city on special occasions-was due to values other than aesthetic. The
modern novel and painting, or recorded music, address themselves to an
isolated individual; and the collective experience of the concert, of the the-
ater, and of the cinema, even if it can mobilize shared values, does not
create any real tie capable of uniting individuals outside of the aesthetic
space.
The demand for truth always comes back to a necessity inherent in the
arguments, and only in the second place to facts and events (which cannot
of themselves assert their truth). The demand for moral justice is already
inherent in the norms themselves, whose legitimacy is presupposed in
every modern society, and only secondly in the arguments which justify
them.35 As for the aesthetic demand, it is expressed by each singular, his-
torically situated work which offers itself to the public, and only secondly
by the criticism which justifies it, which recommends it or contests its
value. But unlike truth and justice, no subject is obliged to accept the pro-
posal of aesthetic meaning. If truth and justice are fallible, their demand is
peremptory once one is obliged to admit its pertinence; the universality of a
work of art, and more recently, of certain films evoking solidarity, remains
on the contrary precarious and tied to the possibility of actualizing singular
experience. That is why there exists a mortal rivalry among the works for
the conquest of a universality of meaning; in this rivalry, the contingency of
the subject's situation-which gives the subject access to a privileged experi-
ence-escapes the will of the artist. It is the "natural" part of the "genius";
only the capacity to exploit it, to confer upon it the form of a language "for
all," is within the province of the artist.
The cognitive and moral dimensions of language tend to parenthesize
the particular meaning of the historic situation; the existence or the nonex-
istence of the facts and events, the normative adequation or inadequation of
maxims of action and of institutions do not imply in themselves any rela-
tion of these demands either to the plans of the subjects or to the ultimate
goals that they are pursuing. Intensified proposals of meaning schematize
in pregnant materials the historical interpretations of the desires and the sit-
uations of the world; they thus reduce the metaphysical projects of the past
to horizons of meaning that subjectivity assigns to itself in the aesthetic
space.36 In modern society, this meaning must prove itself in the process of
artistic reception, where it interacts with other demands for validity and
with rival proposals. Postmodern "aestheto-centrism," inspired by the
Nietzschean theory of the "artist philosopher," can thus be understood as
a refusal of this reduction of metaphysics to a hypothetical status, to simple
proposals of meaning; it is through loyalty to the lost absolute that every-
thing is reduced to a game of appearances.
What makes Adorno correct in his analysis of radical modernity is that,

until recently, most artists themselves admitted the logic of the worst and
of apocalyptic anticipation. From Baudelaire to Beckett, including Kafka
and Schonberg, modernity constantly repeated an apocalyptic blackmail
which aimed to force the course of history. It is this implicit theology which
collapses along with maximalist modernity. But just as the moral catastro-
phes of the twentieth century prohibit, in ethics, a simple "return to" a
classical doctrine, and necessitate instead a redefinition of moral theory,
neither can aesthetics go back in time. To reformulate the conditions of rec-
ognition of an action or a work does not mean to dissolve all criteria in
"contextuality."
Writers like Thomas Bernhard illustrate the passage from the apocalyptic
vision (e.g., Corrections) to a proposal of meaning of the minimalist type (Le
neveu de Wittgenstein). One may regret the passing of the fascinating beauty
of the apocalyptic works, animated as they are by a certainty which tran-
scends singularity, for even the nonmeaningful in them is more powerful
than the risk of triviality that lies in wait for the atheological creator; but
the decline of this type of creation has seemed inevitable since the banaliza-
tion of singular difference. At the same time, the proposal of meaning that
was apocalyptic blackmail-"going beyond real negativity by the despair of
the imagination," according to Adorno's formula-becomes an option
among others, somewhat historically dated, and one would seek in these
works that which connects with the stylization of a singularity. In this
sense, postmodern "sensibility" is a proposal of meaning that is legitimate
in itself.
Such an aesthetics-and it is still this which distinguishes it from that of
Adorno-is not the principal support of a critical theory of society; it is
complementary to an ethics inscribed in the ordinary language of modern
societies. This ethics constitutes the normative expectations of reciprocity
which allow for evaluation of the legitimacy of the social order and of
equity in interpersonal relations. In a society which plays against the uni-
versality of egalitarian commerce the card of singularity and of the "dif-
ference" of each one-including anarchist and ultraconservative impulses-
aesthetics cannot of itself represent the normative base of criticism. Toler-
ance for the expression of singularities serves often as a safety valve for per-
sistent injustices. As for works of post-avant-gardist modernity which
content themselves with seeking a "secular illumination" in the frame of a
world which is neither the worst nor the best, their critical force will be all
the greater as their normative reference is no longer an inverse image of
redemption, but rather a meaning which is conceivable here below, here
and now.
-translated by Roberta Brown
NOTES
1. Cf. Jiirgen Habermas, "La Modernite: un projet inachev6," translated

by G. Raulet, Critique, no. 413 (October 1981): 950-69.
2. Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne (Paris: Editions de

Minuit, 1979) and A. Wellmer, Zur Dialektik von Moderne und
Postmoderne (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985) converge in this way
up to a certain point in their criticism of Habermas. [Jean-Francois
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated
by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, foreword by Frederic Jam-
eson (Manchester: Manchester University Press; Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 1984).]
3. Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectique negative (Paris: Editions Payot, 1978),

11. [Originally published in German as Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1966). English edition, Negative Dialectics, translated
by E.B. Ashton (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Sea-
bury Press, 1973).]
4. Dialectique negative, 15.
5. Dialectique negative, 12.
6. The Aesthetic Theory defines the content of the verities in works of art as
"the act of freeing oneself from myth and bringing about a reconcilia-
tion with it" [trans. C. Lenhardt (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1983), 266]. This definition is borrowed from Walter Benjamin's essay
on Goethe. The schema is invariably applied in all the concrete inter-
pretations of Adorno, whether it is a matter of Goethe or Balzac, of
Schonberg, of Kafka, or of Beckett. [This and subsequent references to
the English translation of Aesthetic Theory are for the convenience of the
reader. In most cases, we have translated directly from the French
translation by Marc Jimenez (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1974), as
cited in the original form of the article.]
7. Albrecht Wellmer, "Wahrheit, Schein, Versohnung. Adornos

asthetische Rettung der Modernitat," in Zur Dialektik, 9-47 (cf. note
2).
8. Cf Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie de l'agir communicationnel, translated by

Jean-Marc Ferry and Jean-Louis Schlegel (Paris: Editions Artheme
Fayard, 1987), vol. 1, 371ff. [Originally published in German as Theorie
des kommunikativen Handelns, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag,
1981-85). English translation, The Theory of Communicative Action,
2 vols., translated by Thomas McCarthy (London: Heinemann;

Boston: Beacon Press, 1984-87).]
9. This is what Wellmer calls the "dialectic of aesthetic appearance," Zur

Dialektik, 15ff. Cf. Horkheimer and Adorno, La dialectique de la raison,
trans. E. Kaufholz (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1974), 35-36. [Origi-
nally published in German as Philosophische Fragmente (New York:
Institute of Social Research, 1944). English edition, Dialectic of
Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming (London: Allen Lane;
New York: Seabury Press, 1972).]
10. Dialectique de la raison, 36: "In so far as an expression of totality, art

claims the dignity of the absolute. It is this which has at times
prompted philosophy to concede the primacy over knowledge to art.
According to Schelling, art begins at the point where knowledge fails;
art is 'the model of science and is already found where science has yet to
penetrate.' According to his theory, the separation of the image and the
sign is 'completely abolished each time that there is an artistic represen-
tation.' The bourgeois world was only rarely inclined to show such
trust in art."
11. Aesthetic Theory, 31.
12. In connection with the young Marx, it was often observed that his crit-
icism of alienated work was based upon a creativist model close to the
human ideal of the Renaissance and of German idealism. If this model
disappears in Das Kapital, Aesthetic Theory goes back to a normative
basis founded on the model of artistic creation.
13. This is why Adorno's aesthetics remain in a sense an aesthetics of

"reflection" (cf. Wellmer, Zur Dialektik, 29).
14. With the exception of Peter Burger, the German critics of Adorno
question the predominance of the concept of truth in his aesthetics.
They propose either a theory of aesthetic pleasure, indifferent to truth
(Karl Heinz Bohrer, Riidiger Bubner), or a relativization of the concept
of truth (authenticity with Franz Koppe; "potential for truth" with
Albrecht Wellmer).
15. Art is truly modern, according to Adorno, "when it has the capacity
to absorb the results of industrialization under capitalist relations of
production, while following its own experiential mode and at the same
time giving expression to the crisis of experience." Aesthetic Theory, 50.
16. "To be sure, autonomy remains irrevocable... .Today, however,

autonomous art begins to manifest an aspect of blindness.... It is not
certain that after its total emancipation, art would not have under-
mined and lost those presuppositions which made it possible."
Aesthetic Theory, 1-2.
24. It is this which Jurgen Habermas (Theorie de l'agir communicationnel,

and Albrecht Wellmer (Zur Dialektik) demonstrate.
25. "The total subjective elaboration of art, in so far as it is a nonconcep-

tual language, is, at the stage of rationality, the only figure in which
something is reflected which resembles the language of Crea-
tion.... Art tries to imitate an expression that would not contain
human intention." Aesthetic Theory, 115.
26. Wellmer, Zur Dialektik; Martin Seel, Die Kunst der Entzweiung: Zum
Begriffder dsthetischen Rationalitdt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985).
27. Cf. Gyorgy Lukacs, Philosophic de -'art (1912-1914): premiers ecrits sur
I'esthetique, translated by Rainer Rochlitz and Alain Pernet (Paris:
Editions Klincksieck, 1981), 159ff. [Originally published in German as
Heidelberger Philosophie der Kunst (1912-1914), edited by Gyorgy Markus
and Frank Benseler (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1975).]
28. Jiirgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), 117. [English edition as The Philosophical Dis-
course of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, translated by Frederick Lawrence
(Cambridge: Polity, in association with Basil Blackwell; Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).]
29. Wellmer (Zur Dialektik, 62ff.) emphasizes the equal importance of sig-
nifying and energetic aspects in the aesthetic object.
30. It is this process which is dealt with by the phenomenology of the

creative process developed by Lukacs's in his Philosophie de l'art, 41ff.
31. "The power to create meaning, presently confined for the most part to
aesthetic domains, remains contingent as does any truly innovative
force." Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Modere, 373. Accor-

ding to Lukacs's Philosophie de I'art, a work of art is the utopia of a
world which can satisfy our expectations of integral self-realization.
Such a definition excludes negative works from art, whereas the "prop-
osition of meaning" accepts the affirmation of an experience of
nonmeaning.
32. Michel Foucault had observed this phenomenon of a deceptive indi-

viduation in contemporary society, attributing it unilaterally to a result
of power; cf. Surveiller etpunir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1975) [Eng-
lish edition as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated
by Alan Sheridan (London: Allen Lane; New York: Pantheon Books,
1978)] and Volonte de savoir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1976) [English
translation as The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, translated
by Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane; New York: Pantheon Books,
1978).]
33. Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Idiot de lafamille. Gustave Flaubert de 1821 a
1857, 3 vols., Bibliotheque de philosophie (Paris: Editions Gallimard,
1971-83), vol. 1, 7. [English translation as The Family Idiot: Gustave
Flaubert, 1821-1857, translated by Carol Cosman (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1981- ).]
34. Cf. Aesthetic Theory, 108: "The viewer unknowingly and uninten-
tionally signs a contract with the art work, as it were, pledging to sub-
ordinate himself to the work on condition that it speak to him."
35. Cf. Jiirgen Habermas, Morale et communication, translated by Chr.

Bouchindhomme (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1986), 80ff. [Originally in
German as MoralbewufJtsein und kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983).]
36. Cf. Lukacs, Philosophie de I'art, 213-26.

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Language for One, Language for All: Adorno and Modernism

Author(s): Rainer Rochlitz and Roberta Brown

M ODERNITY CAN BE assigned a minimalist as well as a maximalist defi-

That is why it attempts to offer a remedy by a mimetic approach and a con-

productive forces, including the knowledge of artistic techniques. A work

Recent attempts to liberate aesthetics from this metaphysical heritage

erroneous tendencies: the "privative," which considers a work of art as

philosophy of the subject, which lead Adorno to admit of no social impact

The intensified proposals of meaning do not form a continuous tradition,

What makes Adorno correct in his analysis of radical modernity is that,

-translated by Roberta Brown

1. Cf. Jiirgen Habermas, "La Modernite: un projet inachev6," translated

2. Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne (Paris: Editions de

3. Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectique negative (Paris: Editions Payot, 1978),

4. Dialectique negative, 15.

5. Dialectique negative, 12.

7. Albrecht Wellmer, "Wahrheit, Schein, Versohnung. Adornos

8. Cf Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie de l'agir communicationnel, translated by

2 vols., translated by Thomas McCarthy (London: Heinemann;

9. This is what Wellmer calls the "dialectic of aesthetic appearance," Zur

10. Dialectique de la raison, 36: "In so far as an expression of totality, art

11. Aesthetic Theory, 31.

13. This is why Adorno's aesthetics remain in a sense an aesthetics of

16. "To be sure, autonomy remains irrevocable... .Today, however,

17. Aesthetic Theory, 35.

18. Aesthetic Theory, 35.

19. Aesthetic Theory, 36.

20. Aesthetic Theory, 43.

21. Aesthetic Theory, 43.

22. Aesthetic Theory, 44.

23. Aesthetic Theory, 47.

24. It is this which Jurgen Habermas (Theorie de l'agir communicationnel,

25. "The total subjective elaboration of art, in so far as it is a nonconcep-

28. Jiirgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt:

30. It is this process which is dealt with by the phenomenology of the

force." Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Modere, 373. Accor-

32. Michel Foucault had observed this phenomenon of a deceptive indi-

35. Cf. Jiirgen Habermas, Morale et communication, translated by Chr.

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